Abstract
BackgroundIn December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan, China; however, the factors affecting the mortality of COVID-19 remain unclear.MethodsThirty-two days of data (the growth rate/mortality of COVID-19 cases) that were shared by Chinese National Health Commission and Chinese Weather Net were collected by two authors independently. Student’s t-test or Mann-Whitney U test was used to test the difference in the mortality of confirmed/severe cases before and after the use of “Fangcang, Huoshenshan, and Leishenshan” makeshift hospitals (MSHs). We also studied whether the above outcomes of COVID-19 cases were related to air temperature (AT), relative humidity (RH), or air quality index (AQI) by performing Pearson’s analysis or Spearman’s analysis.ResultsEight days after the use of MSHs, the mortality of confirmed cases was significantly decreased both in Wuhan (t = 4.5, P < 0.001) and Hubei (U = 0, P < 0.001), (t and U are the test statistic used to test the significance of the difference). In contrast, the mortality of confirmed cases remained unchanged in non-Hubei regions (U = 76, P = 0.106). While on day 12 and day 16 after the use of MSHs, the reduce in mortality was still significant both in Wuhan and Hubei; but in non-Hubei regions, the reduce also became significant this time (U = 123, P = 0.036; U = 171, P = 0.015, respectively). Mortality of confirmed cases was found to be negatively correlated with AT both in Wuhan (r = − 0.441, P = 0.012) and Hubei (r = − 0.440, P = 0.012). Also, both the growth rate and the mortality of COVID-19 cases were found to be significantly correlated with AQI in Wuhan and Hubei. However, no significant correlation between RH and the growth rate/mortality of COVID-19 cases was found in our study.ConclusionsOur findings indicated that both the use of MSHs, the rise of AT, and the improvement of air quality were beneficial to the survival of COVID-19 patients.
Highlights
In early December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), previously known as 2019-nCoV) induced by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) broke out in Wuhan, China (Wu et al, 2020; Gorbalenya et al, 2020)
We assumed that differences in environmental factors in different regions might have contributed to the unbalanced mortality rate
We aimed to investigate whether these makeshift hospitals (MSHs) could reduce the mortality of COVID-19
Summary
In early December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), previously known as 2019-nCoV) induced by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) broke out in Wuhan, China (Wu et al, 2020; Gorbalenya et al, 2020). This newly discovered coronavirus has been confirmed to have human-to-human transmissibility (Chan et al, 2020) and has spread all over the country (Novel, 2019). Our findings indicated that both the use of MSHs, the rise of AT, and the improvement of air quality were beneficial to the survival of COVID-19 patients
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